Successful Start of Grand Challenge

12.12, 20187.01, 2019

Four large sounding rockets were launched from ASC launch sites on Andøya and on Svalbard within 24 hours. The vehicles were owned by NASA and were a part of a project called the Grand Challenge Initiative – CUSP (GCI CUSP).

TRICE-2 liftoff, by K. Blix, ASC

GCI CUSP is an international research project between Norway, USA, Canada, and Japan involving 12 sounding rockets launched from Andøya and Ny-Ålesund between 2018 and 2020.

The basic idea behind the project is to gather scientists investigating phenomena related to the magnetosphere and Earth’s cusp regions. All participants share the collected research data between them.

The four sounding rockets were two Black Brant XIIA from Andøya in the NASA TRICE-2 mission and two Black Brant X from Ny-Ålesund in the NASA VISIONS-2 mission. The rockets were launched in pairs 120 seconds apart, reason being that one wish to measure any changes in the ionosphere between the first and second launch. In addition the rockets flew in different altitudes. VISIONS-2 and TRICE-2 didn’t carry identical payloads but both missions measured parameters related to the cusp region.

All four flights was deemed a success and hopefully marks the beginning of a fruitful GCI CUSP for scientists, engineers, data modellers as well as for the launch sites and ground based instrumentation supporting the project.

Launch DetailsVISIONS-2 vehicle 1 was launched Dec 7th, 2018, 11:06 UTC from Ny-Ålesund, reached an apogee of 805 kilometers and the second followed at 11:08 UTC reaching an apogee of 600 kilometers. VISIONS-2 used Black Brant X vehicles.